


obscurum per obscurius

by Lilith_Valdis



Category: Original Work
Genre: By that I mean 'hey i thought you were my sister but it turns out youre my mother go figure', Cerberus is Concerned, Complicated Relationships, Gen, Referenced Eggpreg, dude may have the right idea, wow i never thought id write that tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-16
Updated: 2018-10-16
Packaged: 2019-08-03 06:58:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16321349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilith_Valdis/pseuds/Lilith_Valdis
Summary: In which Lilith is tired and Cerberus has had ENOUGH of this family.





	obscurum per obscurius

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry for this.

Cerberus was pacing the halls, gathering odd looks as he went. The ornate double doors behind him sent others hurrying on their way, however, wary of them opening and the screaming hell-witch that inhabited the rooms beyond bursting through. Cerberus, unfortunately, had the pleasure of calling said hell-witch ‘mother’. 

It had been six days since she had been seen anywhere in Hell, and even her children were starting to wonder whether she had finally snapped and buried herself under her floorboards. Cerberus had been unanimously elected to see if the Queen of Hell was still in fact living. 

So here he was, gathering his courage to enter a room that he had rarely ventured into. It wasn’t like she’d kill him, he thought. Not immediately.

With a deep breath and a screwing of courage, he threw open the door and hoped that it would distract his mother enough for him to see if she was still sane and then get the fuck out of Dodge. He paused when she didn’t immediately come around the corner to attempt murder. Hesitantly, he walked the few steps it was from her sitting room to her sleeping chambers, and peered around with corner with anxiety curling down his spine. He fell stock still with downright confusion at the sight that awaited him.

His mother had created what he could only describe as a cave on her bed, made of blankets and pillows and an assortment of clothes that were increasingly mismatched the longer he looked. There was the dress Aladira had been complaining about missing; the tassels of Mitsy’s formal uniform were visible under a errant pillow; Jardika’s tattered but well-loved utility belt had been used to secure a blanket to a bedpost; he even spotted a button-up that belonged to him, folded and pressed against one of the sides to further pad the soft monstrosity. Blankets fell down across the ‘entrance’ of the makeshift cave, and he had to peel back a particularly fluffy purple sheet to finally catch sight of his mother. 

She was curled loosely on her left side, facing away from him, and her dark curls were spread on a crumpled quilt that she seemed to be using as a pillow. All the pillows were taken, he thought, eyeing the ‘foundations’ of the burrow. He could hear her soft breathing from here, and it occurred to him suddenly he had never caught his mother sleeping, not even when he had been young and had the habit of sneaking into bed with his ‘older sister’ for comfort. She normally had woken long before he could come within sight of her, an annoyed look on her face and the blankets pulled up with her the hand not under a pillow. Even when he settled in her soft bed with her curls creating a curtain over him that made him feel safe, she never fell asleep until he did. 

Shaking away memories that left a odd feeling in his chest, he moved a bit further into the cave, his left knee now planted on the mattress as he leaned forward. She stirred, finally, and sat up with a yawn that he was surprised didn’t dislocate her jaw. She turned over, and those crocodile eyes opened slightly. He could almost swear that the small space lit up from those searchlight-like pupils. They blinked open fully when she caught sight of him, half-frozen into her space. 

“Cerberus?” Her voice sounded more questioning than normal, as if she wasn’t fully aware, and the worry that had sent him into this room in the first place surfaced again. 

“Mother? Are you alright?” He sounded _worried,_ he noticed with a little internal snarl. “Not that it matters. I was put up to this.” He tacked on, and considered his image saved for the moment. He almost reconsidered it when she gave him an amused look that he knew she often gave his much younger siblings. 

“I’m quite well, Cerberus. You can assure the masses of that.” She turned over fully for the first time, and he almost face-planted into the conveniently placed blankets. The swell of her stomach, so large after all these months, was much flatter than he was used to. She had complained often and loudly for every moment early in the pregnancy, but those complaints tapered off as she became too tired to do much else besides rise from bed in the morning. As time went by, he could see the quiet worry in the eyes of all his siblings, a worry he shared. She had never been this tired during one of her pregnancies as far back as any of them could remember, nor had she grown so large. ‘They’ll rip her apart,’ he had heard Aladira say softly to Jokuls once, her eyes wide and terrified. He had remembered, then, that Aladira’s own human mother had almost died bringing the twins into the world.

Now, she was flat and fully whole, from what he could see. He held up a hand, and moved it forward hesitantly, almost making to touch her stomach before he remembered himself. “You’re...” He trailed off, and didn’t quite know how to finish his own sentence for the first time in awhile. 

“Yes. I’m quite... level.” She said, voice softer than normal. Her own hand rested on her stomach, and she caught his errant look. “I’m alright, Cerberus; as are they.” 

“They?” He bit out, mind still adjusting to this new development. “What do you mean ‘they’? Are babies not referred to as a ‘she’ or ‘he’, Mother?” 

She smiled at him, and he once again caught himself marveling at her unusually good mood. She scooted over, legs coming up to curl under her, and he noticed her wince. His eyes narrowed, and he knew she caught the look when she gave a narrow-eyed look of her own. “I’m a bit torn, from the size of them. Nothing that won’t heal.” She told him, and he nodded like he understood what she was talking about. He wasn’t sure he wanted to, anyway. 

She then leaned forward, and pulled a bundle of blankets a bit closer. It was oddly shaped and heavier than it looked, from the way she heaved to move it into the cradle of her arms. She peeled back the brightly colored sheets, and smiled so widely it lit up her face from ear to ear. He could understand why, eyeing the literal fruits of his mother’s labor with a widened eye.

There were three of them, all a soft white that gleamed in the darkness. Each was as large as a watermelon, and he reconsidered not knowing what his mother meant by ‘tearing’ a little. He wondered how the Hell they had all fit in her abdomen, but quickly decided he didn’t want to be very well educated on the ‘wonders’ of the female body. Then he returned to the point that he considered most important. 

“You had EGGS?” You could hear the multiple question marks in his voice, plain as day. 

Lilith laughed under her breath, eyes mischievous as ever despite her ragged state. “Darling, you should expect the unexpected at this point.” 

Cerberus did the only thing he was capable of at that moment. He buried his face in the surrounding blankets and tried to suffocate himself. 

_Why I bother waking up the morning, I’ll never know…_


End file.
